Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner PW's 10 Greatest Pianists of 20th Century

*scoffs* What threw me was that someone put Lang Lang above Victor Borge. That just shouldn't be allowed.

1-Hofmann
2-Rachmaninoff
3-Busoni
4-Horowitz
5-Godowsky
6-Richter
7-Rosenthal
8-Friedman
9-Serkin
10-Cortot
10-D'Albert
10-Paderewski

If you are ranking those who had the greatest influence on 20th century piano playing, I am very surprised that you do not mention Josef Hofmann. Artur Rubinstein, Horowitz and Gould were enormously influenced by Hofmann's playing - each heard him as a child. I am sure you read that Gould decided to become a concert pianist after coming home from Hofmann's last Toronto recital in 1938.

I gave strong consideration to Hofmann (and many others). As you say, he was revered by many great pianists, including Rachmaninoff and both Josef and Rosina Lhevinne, who were in turn influential as performers and teachers. As the teacher of Cherkassky, Hofmann can be said to have passed down a certain nineteenth-century style of piano playing with a degree of freedom, personal idiosyncrasy and beautiful sound production well into the late twentieth-century. But when I was making my list I tried to think of who made twentieth century piano playing in terms of both repertoire and style. If you go to almost any recital today I think you could trace at least some of the programming and interpretation to the influence of one of the top 8. (Moore and Pressler are there, obviously, for the status they have given to the role of collaborative pianists.) With Hofmann, I'm not so sure this is the case. Maybe if a salon piece by Moszkowski or Weber or some such is played as an encore, you could point to Hofmann, but equally Horowitz, Bolet and others could be named. I guess this is all pretty academic but it is interesting nonetheless. It shows that even when you try to use an objective criterion (these are by no means my 10 favourite pianists) it is impossible really to agree.

1. Rubinstein (The most naturally talented pianist. His playing has nobility, beauty, spine and when called for a thundering steely fortissimo. The most versatile and total pianist IMO)
2. Rachmaninov
2. Alexei Sultanov (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrbJJ31EeLU)
3. Cortot
4. Kempff
5. Glenn Gould
6. Ashkenazy (when young)
7. Pletnev
8. Schnabel
9. Horowitz (Good but overated. A craftsman who indulges in in exaggerates colorful tonal production at the expense of honest and healthy playing. His banging on the keyboard sometimes feels very inorganic. To me he sounds artificial.
10. Richter (Good but overrated. Too heavy playing with little breathing air. His playing is solid like a rock. I just wish he would let in some air and sunshine to make his playing more complete.)

I wasn't tricked this time.

Sometimes you can tell a zombie thread from the peculiar odor that arises when you read the subject line and see an unfamiliar (i.e., long-gone) username as the original poster, but still, the thread runs to several pages. It just smells weird...

1. Rachmaninov-everything a delight. My teacher heard him practicing and listened to scales and scales in thirds along with excerpts of Bach WTC.
2. Richter- he is my personal favorite because of his exciting and innovative interpretations. Ex Liszt B Minor super loud or super soft a dream state, then super slow or super fast with perfect clarity and tone balance. A superb surgeons hands.
3. Kapell- at my last lesson with maestro Wild he felt Kapell to be in the category of Rach.
4. Horowitz-saw his last performance in NYC at the Met 1989, so much feeling in the air, his playing touched my soul for those moments like none other live.
5. Gilels- saw him at his last Carnegie Hall recital in April 1983? The second half's Schumann Symphonic Etudes left me in awe. The Bach WTC encore three or four measures into an early Prelude I stood up because his tone was so clear and perfect for Bach better than Gould at that moment. By the end of the fugue everyone in my row was standing. Just a perfect moment. Like Horowitz's last Traumeri at the MET in 1989. God for those few moments allowed human attainment of perfection.
6. Michalangeline (sp)
7. Sokolov- will rearrange my schedule in Winter/Spring 2014 to see him in Europe. I have waited too long.
8. Kempff
9. Lipatti
10. Pletnev- I have like Sokolov everything he has recorded with piano. Sublime pianist everything is held in a different light with him. Really going up in my estimation as his career seems to rekindle itself after an injury?

All superb technicians and artists and performed for 20 years or more. Lipatti died of Lukemia right at 20 years service and Kapell the same but from a plane accident. To be the best of the century need to be technically superb, superb and interesting artist, play at that level for at least twenty years [Cliburn service was not continuous or in latter years that technically free and artistically innovative]

WHY AM I NOT SEEING CLIBURN HERE???????????

Who cares if he was not "continuous". I'd rather have even 3 years of great, artistic playing than 50 years of horseshit.

Because the members who know best weren't here yet in '06.

But since then (like in this other thread) we do know.
Great that you love him too!

We've had threads like this more recently and Van has indeed gotten his due.

I'm just happy that Derelux got Victor Borge in there. I wasn't here in 2006, but I'm pretty sure that had Derelux not done that, I would have been summoned by some bat-signal wrinkle in the time-space continuum to come here and make sure it was done.

I'll have a go at this. Here are my personal nineteen - who is counting, right? - favourite (to replace the word "greatest") pianists for the 20th century - that is what we really are doing, right, listing favourites?

In no particular order:

1) Ferruccio Busoni
2) Alexander Siloti
3) Eugene d'Albert
4) Edwin Fischer
5) Ignacy Jan Paderewski
6) Ervin Nyiregyhazi
7) Raymond Lewenthal
8) Vladimir Horowitz
9) Vladimir de Pachmann
10) Edouard Risler
11) Josef Hofmann
12) Carl Reinecke (piano rolls only)
13) Egon Petri
14) Gunnar Johansen
15) Jorge Bolet
16) Ernst Levy
17) Louis Kentner
18) Raymond Trouard
19) Martin Berkofsky (he is the only one on the list who still is living!)

The list is subject to change without notice

M.

Where is Cliburn????????

OK, you're forcing me to do a list.

In no particular order (not necessarily anyway -- just the order that I think of them) and apologies to the many that I'd like to include but "10" is "10."
Also I oughta say that on things like this I have sort of a bias against the younger ones, not because they're younger but because I think we really need the benefit of time to know how to consider them.
And BTW, while Michael had a point that what we're really doing is giving favorites, not really greatest, I'm trying to do the latter. The list would be a bit different for "favorites."

Horowitz
Rubinstein
Cliburn
Schnabel
Rachmaninoff
Hofmann
Argerich
Lhevinne
Gould

.....so, where are we so far: That's 9 -- room for one more. And to my surprise, this isn't as hard as I assumed it would be. That's really all the pianists I feel I 'have to' include. So, let's see, who do I give the honor of being 'the other one':

Paderewski

Remember that concepts of "greatness" can differ. I certainly don't mean that all of these 10 necessarily 'played the piano better' than any number of other pianists.

For me it would be:

Rachmaninov
Horowitz
Cliburn
Richter (you didn't include Richter/??? tsk tsk)
Rubinstein
Serkin
Schnabel
Tureck
Gould

And for me, 9 for now haha!

I agree that there is a difference between "favourite" and "greatest". I tried to stick with the latter, but of course most of my favourites seem to be in the "greatest" as well =)

I talked about him in this post on another thread.

I invited anyone to try to say what it is about Richter -- not just about what was so great, but what he really was at all; I never perceived him as having any clear identity. Nobody bit. (Argerichfan said a little about what he thought Richter brought to Brahms 2nd but that was it.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfJVpjI3wJM

Hear his Schubert, most of all.

Sure. I like a lot of his performances and love a few of them. But that's true for dozens of other pianists.

What about what I asked up there.....can anybody try to say something about it?

Say about what? Identity? Well, one thing obviously is that I can't imagine anybody else playing Schubert like that, he opened a whole new world there. It's his. And I think it's pretty special. You can argue the "no identity" card for every single pianist if you wanted to (except Horowitz probably, haha).

At the end of the day, to each their own. But surely we can learn to acknowledge greatness and give credit when credit is due...

Hi Mark C, how are you?

Not entirely sure what you're asking for here regarding Richter. Some examples of how you would characterize the "identity" of other pianists would be helpful. But, I'll give it a shot.

Richter strikes me as a perfect balance of his bloodline -- a strict sense of structure from his German side and the hot-bloodedness from his Russian side. Thus, his interpretations at their very best have this mixture of a clear and consistent rhythmic underpinning combined with a controlled (sometimes just barely) impetuousness. In many ways, it's a perfect metaphor for the contradictory aspects of his nature and identity. There's a reason why his documentary is subtitled "The Enigma." He's a difficult personality to pin down. Reading his memoirs and notes and interviews, he strikes me as rather self-effacing and aloof about certain things that others might consider essential real world considerations, but he was very, very serious about music. Guarded, but wryly humorous and outspoken regarding his opinions on music and musicians. Not one to suffer fools gladly but reverent to those he admired.

... I also jotted a few things about how I perceive his pianism but afterward it seemed like the kind of stuff you weren't really looking for (?)

Incidentally, I'm unclear about the significance of nailing down an identity regarding what it has to do with one's art. But perhaps that would make more sense to me should you clarify what you're after here.

Cheers!